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“Why’d you have to move to Chicago,” Mincowski complains, bracing herself against a gust of wind. “The one year it snows, too? This is such a bad choice.”
“And that’s why you stayed in California,” Lovelace says, amused. “Even though you could always cosign on my apartment.”
“I’d rather die.”
“There we go.”
“I know I promised I’d spend Christmas with you-”
“And bring the rest of the guys-”
“Yes, yes, they’ll be here. But you didn’t tell me it was so freaking cold.”
“Aww, baby,” Lovelace coos just to see the repulsed face her girlfriend makes before the wind blows more snow onto their faces. She tugs her scarf down further so it protects most of her face, just leaving a gap for her eyes. Lovelace, despite moving here, was not built for the cold weather either. “There’s a coffee shop just down the street, want to make a pit stop?”
“Rather than wait out here for the bus?” Minkowski raises her eyebrows. “Please. I’m begging you.”
“The bus takes us to the train, which will get us straight to the airport, and-”
“But why do I have to go,” she complains.
“Renée!”
“I know they’re my friends too, but I live next door to them!”
“The Christmas spirit.”
“You hate Christmas.”
“Whatever.” Lovelace holds the door open and the gust of warm air has them practically running in, stomping their boots at the mat and waiting to get in line, inspecting the tall chalkboard with all the drinks and pastries listed. “Jesus, shit’s getting expensive,” she mutters, pulling out her wallet. “I’m just going to get a black coffee. You?”
“Make that two,” Minkowski nods. “The boys will get all the frilly things when they get here.”
“You know Hera would get a fancy drink if she could, too.”
“She and Doug would try and see how tall they could order the whipped cream,” Minkowski agrees, a bitter pang sticking her heart. He’s still the same, really. But… different. Mellower. Less like a part of their little group. “Oh. Doug’s bringing Pryce.”
“What?”
“And my ex-husband. So it’ll be a fun Christmas.”
“Can we just tell them that we don’t have the room?”
“They’re already on the plane.”
Lovelace curses and shuffles up closer to the register. “Well, you go get us a table. I guess… there’s an air mattress in my closet, maybe? I think I took it from my neighbor when she moved. Shit, Renée.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“What kind of Christmas present says still mad you took my friend’s memories, but you’re a different person now so I’m sorry for you too I guess and thanks for divorcing my girlfriend?”
“Nothing. Don’t get them a card that says either of those. Get them, like, a candle.” Minkowski kisses her on the cheek. “I’m going to get a table. Wanna split a brownie?”
Lovelace checks her phone. “Damn bus doesn’t run for another twenty minutes. Yeah, sure.”
Lovelace gives Minkowski her space at the airport. When Dominik comes out they hug, briefly, and chat about the house, the dog Dominik got while they were, you know, and Jacobi and Doug and Hera excitedly crowd Lovelace, trying to get her to talk about her new job in the city.
“I really can’t say a lot. Government work.”
“It’s glorified HR,” Hera tells them.
“Oh!” Jacobi looks over to Doug. “HR is, like, a bunch of people that tell you what is and isn’t appropriate at work.”
“It’s Ethical Oversight,” Lovelace clarifies, “different program.”
“What do you know about ethics?” Jacobi grins at her.
“Pleanty, apparently.”
“I don’t believe it.” He claps her on the back. “Well, Dougie-boy and I were going to go out for drinks tonight. Know any good places?”
“I don’t really drink alone, so…” she shrugs. “You can check some list in the newspaper.”
“Let me guess, you get it delivered and read the funnies on Sunday and everything?”
She smacks him upside the head. “Come on. I actually went out on a limb to get us an Uber. If you keep insulting me, I’ll have Minkowski tell you all about how horrible the bus is.”
“Always late,” Minkowski chimes in, pulling out of her conversation with Dominik. “And so cold!”
“That’s just, uh, Chicago,” he smiles, and Lovelace moves her lips in the shape of something like a quick smile back at him.
None of them are on bad terms, exactly. Doug helps Miranda, who’s stayed quiet the whole time, into the front seat by the driver and Hera offers to take the trunk to save space and they debate whether or not non it’s legal to keep an AI built into a robot body in the trunk of a car when you couldn’t a person, and Lovelace says it creates an interesting ethical debate, and eventually they all settle into their seats.
Lovelace has Minkowski in her bed, warm and soft and sleeping soundly with her hair spread all over her pillow. Lovelace can’t stand to look at her any longer. She still hasn’t needed to sleep and wonders if that instinct, to just lie there unconscious, will ever come back.
Technically, she never had it in this body.
In her mind, it’s the best thing
She paces around her house on her tip toes, flicking the kitchen light on and cringing at the loud buzzing noise.
“What,” she hisses into the microphone, listening down below.
“IIIIISABELLL,” Jacobi yells, and she cringes, hitting the buzzer to let them in. She slumps against the wall, letting go of the button. She doesn’t need to know any longer.
He and Doug stumble into the kitchen minutes later and Lovelace looks at the clock and looks back to them with a raised eyebrow.
“I’ll put on hot chocolates,” she says, moving to get the kettle.
Usually, on her own, she just stays up on her computer, working and working until the urge for a few hours of shut eye overcomes her. Sometimes she binges a TV show or she does her own equipment-less exercises or she passes the time, but Minkowski is still a light sleeper after all this time. And now even her living room, full of a snoring man, woman, and android, is off limits.
Doug cheers and Jacobi slaps a hand over his mouth, shushing him.
Lovelace cringes at the faucet, filling the electric kettle just enough for three mugs. Faintly, she recognizes Jacobi explaining to Doug the etiquette of “an adult sleepover”.
She smiles to herself, in the fridge reaching for the whipped cream that Minkowski thought would be festive.
Sloppily, Doug tries to see just how tall he can build his tower of whipped cream and when it starts to tip over, Jacobi rushes into the rescue, taking a giant bite out of it and grinning as it gets all over his face and Doug laughs and Lovelace sips her cup, warm and cozy. Maybe she can be tired enough that she can lie in bed, bored, for all hours of the night.
It’s almost like she blinks and it’s just her and Jacobi, drinking quietly, and Doug is… lying down on the air mattress sideways, taking up both his and Jacobi’s spot.
“Want a smoke?” Jacobi offers and yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad.
Their jackets feel too loud, but no one looks up as they click the door behind them and creep over towards the elevator, Jacobi deciding that if he were to try the stairs he would slip and fall to his demise.
Out in front of the building, the streets are that kind of quiet that every noise just feels all the more louder. As annoying as it can get during the day, all kinds of people and cars and buses and teenagers shouting at each other until their parents summon them home, Lovelace listens to the ambulance far off in the distance and is amazed, a bit, by how quiet everything can get.
It’s not like she smokes often. She almost never buys them for herself. She hates the stink, hates the reliance, hates the way her muscles relax and everything wooshes past her without her noticing at all. But there’s something nice about the tickle of smoke down her throat, the warmth of the exhale as it goes up up up and away, and something nice about the way Jacobi looks at her.
They smoke the first one in silence, looking out at the sludge in the streets and the untouched snow atop the lampposts, undisturbed by busy feet and pollution.
“I didn’t know Dominik was coming,” she says when she’s finished her first, crushing it against the wall and holding out her hand for Jacobi to get more back.
“Doug’s been drinking most days, even though he wants nothing to do with my cigarettes,” Jacobi admits.
She laughs.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.” Jacobi nods, slowly. “They won’t let him see Anne. Or, she doesn’t want to see him. And he feels bad, because he doesn’t feel bad. So I let him move in with me and I think we’re both becoming alcoholics.”
“Renée and I used to basically live together on the ship, and now her ex husband is in the apartment I didn’t ask her to move into with me because I thought I was taking her away from her life. You know, the old one she came back to and hated? And I don’t even think she cares, really. It’s just me. Which isn’t how it’s supposed to go.” She pauses. “Your thing is bigger, though.”
“I think I’m in love with him.”
“You, Jacobi? Not just fucking around?”
“I don’t fuck around.”
“Right. Kepler.”
“Yeah.”
This happens to them sometimes.
They smoke. They admit things they wouldn’t ever want to actually talk about. They smoke some more. They pretend the conversation never happened.
“Well, you make good hot chocolate.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. It’s gotta count for something.”
“We call each other by our first names.”
“Yeah. That’s big.”
Lovelace nods, fidgeting with the end of her cigarette.
“She’s happier, right?”
Jacobi shrugs. “None of us are. But it’s the better thing.”
“Yeah.”
The better thing.
In the morning, Renée curls up in Isabel’s arms and they hold each other, content.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is better.